Aliya Arora, Organizer at ACORN Canada

==============

Aliya is a 28 year old organizer at ACORN Canada. She has worked with the organization for just over a year. Driven by her passion for social and economic justice, she aims to bring better living conditions to low income areas. She believes that building strong communities is an important focus in life. Low income housing is a particularly important issue for her because she spent some of her childhood in struggling neighbourhood.

Aliya's parents are both Indian, but were both born in Toronto and have lived their entire lives in Ontario. She is 5 foot 8 inches and has a light brown skin complexion, with radiant chesnut-colored hair. She spent the first years of her life living in a lower income apartment in Scarborough along with her parents and her mother's parents. The apartment had several problems including cockroach infestations, mold and an unreliable landlord. When she was eleven, they moved to a more affluent house in eastern Toronto. The difference between the homes made Aliya aware at a young age of the stress an unsafe environment can create.

Aliya has an annual salary of $30,000, and is motivated primarily by the impact she makes in the lives of the people and communities she works with. She trains for marathons and enjoys painting when she can find the time. Her experience with computers and the Internet consists of email, word processing, keeping in touch with friends on Facebook, and browsing the web. She uses the text messaging, email and location capabilities of her smart phone. Currently she does most of her planning off of a computer, but she is excited about the idea of using a web based interactive map to help - as long as the interface is intuitive, and doesn't require to much of her time to upkeep or use. Her experience with mapping applications is limited to Google Maps, so she would prefer that there isn't a new service she has to learn about.